'Beware Low-Flying Girls'

Read the extract from 'Beware Low-Flying Girls' by Katherine Rundell.

It is about Odile, a girl whose adventure begins when she discovers she has a very unusual skill.

Extract 1

It was cold, that day she first took flight, and the snow lay thick enough to hide a cat in.

She wore her father's coat. It came down past her knees, and she had rolled the sleeves up, so they hung at her
wrist in a great roll of wool. The coat had once been a deep, cocoa-bean brown, but now it was the colour of an
elderly shoe. It smelt, very slightly, of horses and woodsmoke.

The wind was fierce that day. It was often windy in winter at the top of the mountain; birds got blown backwards
up the cliff edge, reverse-somersaulting through the sky, their wings shedding feathers like confetti. Seagulls blew
into the house, sometimes right into her lap as she sat curled up in the corner, wrapped in rugs, reading by the
firelight. Suddenly finding that you had an irate seagull as a bookmark was not, Odile thought, ideal, but her
grandfather would throw a blanket over them and stomp out into the night with the bird bundled into his arms.

'Always be polite to birds, he would say. 'They know more than they let on.'

The house was built into the rock of the mountain, and the door was polished stone. Her grandfather had lived on
the mountaintop all his life. Odile had lived with him since she was a baby. She had nobody else. In the house, the
fire burned all the year round. 'Keep the fire as hot as the human heart, said her grandfather, his jaw stern. 'Never
let it go out.'

That day, she had pulled her father's coat around her, and set out. The wind caught the coat as she walked down
the mountain path, billowing it out behind her like a sail. It had no buttons left, so she took a corner of the coat in
each fist and held her arms stiff at her side. She began to run, her hair blowing in her eyes and mouth, down the
hill.

The wind caught her coat and tossed her upwards. Odile felt the sudden swoop of gravity undone.

It lasted only a second. She screamed, pulling her coat up over her face, and dropped to the ground again, landing
on her hands and knees in the snow. Her breathing stopped. Though she had barely fallen two feet, she felt
winded, gasping and choking for air.

'I flew, she whispered. Or had she perhaps just tripped and fallen more extravagantly than usual? She had to be
sure.

Odile rubbed some snow into her eyes to make sure she was awake. She pulled a twig from a tree, brushed the
frost from it and used it to pin her hair out of her eyes. She put on her gloves.

She stretched out the corners of her coat. She began to run, downhill, her feet kicking up a spray of snow.

The coat billowed out behind her. Her breath misted the air in front of her.

And Odile flew.

1. Adventure stories are a genre. This means that different adventure stories contain similar features. In pairs,
discuss:
 the types of characters in adventure stories
 the types of settings in adventure stories
 what happens in adventure stories
 how these stories usually end.

Compare your findings with another pair. Apart from the main character, what other types of people do you find in
adventure stories?

2. Practise working out word meanings from their context.

The following words are taken from the third paragraph of the extract. What do you think they mean?
 a) fierce
b) confetti
c) irate
d) bundled.

3. When reading a text, it is important to be able to identify and understand the main points and ideas that a
writer tells you.

Explicit information is information that the writer states directly.

Read the text again and make notes on:

a) what you can find out about Odile's family

b) what is unusual about the setting
c) other unusual aspects of the story.

4. The narrative structure of a story is the order in which events take place. This includes how a story starts, when
different pieces of information are revealed and how the story ends. Look at this timeline, which shows the first
four main points in 'Beware Low-Flying Girls'.

You are told Odile can fly.

The strength of the wind is described.

Her father's coat is described.

You find out that Odile's grandfather and Odile live alone.

Write down the last two main points in the extract from 'Beware Low-Flying Girls'.

5. Writers design the narrative structure of their stories to keep readers interested. In pairs, discuss the following
questions.

a) Why does the writer start the story by telling you Odile can fly?
b) Why does she tell the reader that Odile wears her father's coat?
(Think about why the coat might be special.)
c) Why does the writer end this part of the story with Odile flying?

6. Which parts of the story have you found most interesting so far? In your pairs, predict what you think might
happen, or what you would like to find out, in the next part of the story. Do you both have the same opinion?
7. Write a summary of about 50 words explaining what you have learnt about the features of adventure stories.
Use some examples from 'Beware Low-Flying Girls' in your summary.